More docs, hospitals attest to meaningful use stage 2 — Apple has a moral obligation...to rule the digital health world

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SLOWLY BUT SURELY, DOCS AND HOSPITALS INCH TOWARD MU 2: Continuing at a slow pace, eight hospitals and 447 professionals have qualified for stage 2 of the meaningful use EHR incentive program through June 1, CMS said yesterday. The updated figures, presented to the Health IT Policy Committee by CMS’ Elisabeth Myers, present an improved picture of the meaningful use program compared to a month ago, when the agency said only 4 hospitals and 50 professionals had attested to stage 2. The meaningful use program has paid $23.7 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentive program to date. CMS said 91 percent of eligible hospitals have received some form of EHR incentive payment, and more than 383,000 professionals have received incentive payments.

Cloud-based software proved most popular among the 447 physicians who qualified for stage 2 of meaningful use through June 1, a CMS official said at the same meeting. We’re sure @DanHaley5 of athenahealth is happy to hear that.

Welcome to Wednesday Morning eHealth, where Eric Cantor’s shocking defeat in Virginia last night did not affect my time shopping at the Pentagon City WorldMarket in the slightest. Got some ideas? Ping me at agold@politico.com. Tweet at us @Morning_EHealth and @POLTICOPro using the hashtag #ProsKnow.

MEANINGFUL USE DROPOUT, NO GRADUATION DAY FOR YOU: About nine percent of providers who qualified for stage 1 of meaningful use in 2011 left the program during the following two years, according to the ONC. Sorry, I couldn’t help the Grease reference. Some of the doctors may have retired or died, while others left for various other reasons, according to data presented by ONC at the Health IT Policy Committee meeting Tuesday. A total of 59 percent of eligible providers have attested to Stage 1 of meaningful use, according to the data. Youthful physicians are most likely to attest. Among specialties, behavioral therapists such as psychiatrists lag behind other groups. Solo practitioners also lag somewhat, while larger practices are more likely to have attested. As expected, the physicians most likely to reach at least the first stage of meaningful use are members of patient-centered medical homes.

Also, meaningful use isn’t going anywhere. At the same meeting, DeSalvo dismissed a suggestion that the government suspend the meaningful use certification program, saying it could be improved without a full stop in the process. She was responding to Paul Egerman, a committee member and software entrepreneur who has complained that certification of vendor EHRs is overly burdensome. “ONC has dramatically underestimated the costs,” he said, and vendors “feel there’s a moving target and they’re being put through hoops.”

While ONC has acknowledged problems, and changes in the program are under discussion, the agency is moving toward stage 3 requirements while stage 2 is still troubled, Egerman said. DeSalvo said she understood the need to improve the process, “but I’m not in agreement that we stop everything and take several months to redesign everything.”

APPLE HAS A MORAL OBLIGATION…TO RULE THE DIGITAL HEALTH WORLD: The FDA published a summary memo about its meeting with Apple last year (the meeting had the mHealth world buzzing), and MobiHealthNews obtained a copy. It was speculated that the meeting would help FDA avoid regulation for its then-rumored health products, now what we know will be HealthKit. A few highlights of the meeting as outlined in the memo: Apple called the FDA’s mobile medical app guidance “fair.” Apple said it has a “moral obligation” to do more in digital health (ooh, deep). Apple wants to be “on the side on the FDA,” even with opportunities to innovate. The tech giant also promised to work with the FDA to “avoid regulatory surprises.” See the whole roundup of the memo: http://bit.ly/1jj39Sz

DESALVO SETS ANOTHER PRIORITY: USABLE EHRS: Electronic health records must be faster, smarter and lighter to prove that technology isn’t just “replicating paper charts in an electronic fashion,” ONC National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo said in an interview with HealthLeadersMedia. “It's like your phone, that we used to think was a thing that you dialed to call someone else, and now we realize is a way that measures sleep. It's a new way of thinking,” DeSalvo said. So interoperability, making meaningful use reasonable…She’s got a lot on her plate for 2014. http://bit.ly/TGZ3xS

The FDA is hiring a new leader for regulatory policy in it device division; maybe he/she will have a hand in FDASIA going forward? http://bit.ly/1llXUpz

ICD-10 IMPLEMENTATION IS NOT A GAME: ICD-10 deployment is starting to feel like a game of “Red Light, Green Light,” with constant starts and stops, health care consultant Brett LeFevre writes in Health Affairs. “Players must run forward at full speed, until the words ‘red light’ are called out with no warning, forcing them to stop on a dime. In this case, countless organizations and institutions may be feeling a little disoriented by the latest change.” http://bit.ly/1pDP2fF

Meanwhile, our David Pittman reports, the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates at its annual meeting in Chicago, voted yesterday to try to stop 2015 implementation of the ICD-10 system.

Some musings on Apple’s “moral obligation” to digital health, from The Advisory Board:http://bit.ly/1pAbuqe

With access to student health records, the role of the school nurse is expanding. From Kaiser Health News: http://bit.ly/1oSqOwR

The CommonWell Health Alliance, which includes EHR vendors Cerner, athenahealth, Greenway, Allscripts and McKesson, will roll out an interoperability pilot this summer, from Forbes: http://t.co/mmstkyKzBe

An analysis from Castlight Health finds that health service prices are, quite literally, all over the map: http://bit.ly/1s3LCqV